Red in Tooth and Claw

Texts: Job 38:1-11; 2 Corinthians 6:1-13; Mark 4:35-41 From time to time over the years I have come across people who assure me that they don't need to come to church to meet God; they only have to go for a walk in the great outdoors.  God reveals himself to them, they tell me, in the beauty of his creation.  I'm always tempted to ask them to describe such an experience to me.  When and where did God last reveal himself to them in this way? My bet would be that it was on a lovely day.  The sun was shining, it was warm without being too hot, and the birds were singing happily in the trees.  The sea and sky were beautiful shades of blue, and in the fields stock were munching luscious green grass.  In the distance the mountains towered above the landscape, majestic and eternal.  Yep, surely God was in this place, at least as much if not more than in a cold, musty old church. But would these people see God in his creation while standing on the deck of the Wahine during the storm that destroyed it; or in the middle of Cyclone Bola?  Would they see him in the parched Aussie dirt following seven years of drought; and what sort of God is revealed to them by the Boxing Day tsunami?  The English poet Tennyson famously described Nature as "red in tooth and claw"; is that how we would describe God?  And as the biting winter winds chill the edges of our ears (and much else besides!), do we find ourselves thinking that it is really God whispering sweet nothings to us? I suspect not.  I suspect that in midwinter we are least likely to fall prey to the sentimental twaddle that seems to attach to "Nature" – and especially to "Mother Nature" – from time to time, inside the Church as well as outside it.  We need to remind ourselves at such times that we cannot have it both ways: if a lovely, warm, calm sunny day reveals to us a loving caring God, then a tsunami or an earthquake must reveal to us a capricious, spiteful God who doesn't care two hoots about the vast numbers of people who are killed by such natural disasters.  And that can't be right, can it? Let's turn to the Scriptures for some clues, if not answers.  One thing we can say for certain is that God and Nature are not the same thing!  The Bible is very clear about that: God created all things – Creator and creation are set apart.  But go beyond this and we have to admit there is more ambiguity; and it seems to begin at the beginning.  Our theologians tells us that God created all things ex nihilo, meaning out of nothing, and that's certainly one interpretation of the opening verses of Genesis.  The first two verses say this: In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.  Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the face of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters. Then follows the various creations, beginning with light.  So did God create the earth formless and empty, etc., and go on from there; or does this mean that the earth was formless and empty when God started the creative process?  Well, no doubt many Ph.D. theses have been written on this critical question; but why it matters seems to be the basis on which the Bible develops the relationship between God and his creation...  Did God begin by creating chaos out of nothing, and then set about bringing order out of chaos?  Or was chaos there and God set about overcoming it by bringing order out of the primeval chaos?  In other words, is God responsible for the chaos as well as the order in the world; or is chaos simply the absence of order in the same way that darkness is the absence of light? Which of these two approaches we choose will guide our response to natural disasters, particularly if we accept the view that the creative process is ongoing.  Many years ago I was teaching a Bible class of 8-10-year-olds, and one of the bright sparks asked me an awkward question.  If God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, what did he do on the eighth?  I didn't know; so later I asked the Vicar.  He didn't know either, but his wife had a suggestion: tell the boy we are still in the sixth day.  I think she said it as a joke, but I have often thought since that that would have been a very good answer.  That God is still creating the world; God is still bringing order out of chaos. So that when a terrible natural disaster strikes, that comes out of the chaos against which God is still working. A similar approach might be to rely on the common but clumsy word we sometimes use about God, "Sustainer".  We call God "the Creator and Sustainer of all things"; which reminds us that God doesn't merely set everything in motion, he keeps it in motion.  If God ever ceased to sustain all things, creation would revert to chaos (or cease to exist, depending on your point of view). One of the things I torture my brain with sometimes is "new physics", and related topics; and I recently read an article about so-called "dark matter".  One of the mysteries of the universe to scientists in this field is why the universe is expanding and shows every sign of continuing to do so.  It should be slowing down; gravity should be pulling everything back together again, but it isn't?  Why not?  The scientists' best guess so far is that there must be another force in the universe that counteracts gravity, and this force keeps the whole thing from imploding.  That seems to me to be a useful analogy to illustrate the sustaining power of God.  If God did not counteract the destructive force of chaos the whole of creation would collapse. And so to the sea.  The Hebrews did not much like the sea, and there are many references in the Scriptures to the destructive power of the sea.  It was important to them, therefore, that God had authority over the sea, and could command it to behave.  The psalmists, in particular, regularly talked to God about the sea, and reminded him that he was in control of it.  In Psalm 89(9) the writer tells God: You rule over the surging sea; when its waves mount up, you still them.  Similarly, in Psalm 107 the psalmist recalls the plight of some mariners who were rescued by God: He stilled the storm to a whisper; the waves of the sea were hushed.  In both those cases, the understanding seems to be that God exercises power over the sea, to overcome it.  However, in Psalm 107 the author first attributes the storm to God: For he spoke and stirred up a tempest that lifted high the waves.  They mounted up to the heavens, and went down to the depths.  And there's that ambiguity I spoke about.  Is God responsible for causing atrocious weather, as well as counteracting it? In our reading from Job this morning, God is shown very much in charge of the sea: Who shut up the sea behind the doors when it burst forth from the womb, when I made the clouds its garment and wrapped it in thick darkness, when I fixed limits for it and set its doors and bars in place, when I said, 'This far you may come and no farther; here is where your proud waves halt"?  And in our gospel reading we see the same sort of relationship between Jesus and the stormy sea; it obeys his word of command. But that is not always the case, is it?  Sometimes chaos erupts causing widespread devastation, and we are left with our desperate questions: did God cause that disaster or was he unable to prevent it?  I end with this poem that I wrote in the aftermath of the Boxing Day tsunami as I reflected on this same passage from Job.

Putting the Pieces Together

Texts: Isaiah 6:1-8; Romans 8:12-17; John 3:1-17 At the time of preparing this sermon on Friday I was conscious of the fact that in Christchurch the jury was out in the Bain re-trial; and it occurred to me that the task facing them was very similar to the task facing the Church in its infancy.  The jury had a mass of pieces of evidence before it, and their task was to try to arrange those pieces of evidence into a complete coherent picture, so that in the end they could confidently speak with one voice: guilty or not guilty.  The task facing the Church was also to arrive at a unanimous view on the central question it faced: given all the extraordinary evidence about the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth, followed by the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, who do we say Jesus was and is? And if I were a judge summing up to a jury charged with answering that question, I would say something along these lines.  "Members of the jury, the time has come for you to have your say, to make your determination on this question.  You might feel overwhelmed by all the evidence you have heard, much of it straining credibility in terms of your everyday human experience.  You have heard about sight being restored to the blind, and hearing to the deaf.  You have heard about the paralytic getting up off their beds and walking again – in fact, leaping and dancing with joy.  You have heard about the demonically possessed being set free, or (if you prefer) the psychiatrically disordered restored to full mental health. You have heard about vast crowds being fed from a handful of food.  You have heard about storms being quelled, the wind ceasing and huge waves calming down instantly in response to a word of command...  You have heard about teaching that has blown the minds of those who heard it. "Above all, members of the jury, you have heard that this man, this Jesus of Nazareth, was put to death in full view of the public one Friday afternoon, taken down from the cross on which he was crucified, and placed in a tomb that was then sealed.  Yet, say the many, many witnesses who have testified before you, that tomb was found to be empty on the following Sunday, and that man was found to be alive again.  Furthermore, you have heard it said to you that eye-witnesses saw that man ascend into heaven some weeks after his death, but even that, so it has been said to you, wasn't the end of the matter; for 10 days later another extraordinary event, again apparently observed by many people, is said to have taken place in Jerusalem.  You were told that the close followers of this Jesus of Nazareth were together in one place, when their leaders, all Galileans, started speaking in all sorts of languages they could not possibly know. "So much for the eye-witness accounts that have been brought before you, and which you must consider carefully and make what sense of them you can.  But you have also heard from certain experts of a religious nature.  Their evidence is of a different nature; we might call it interpretative.  They have offered their wisdom on how we might understand and interpret the extraordinary events to which those eye-witnesses have testified.  Some you might think have, in laymen's terms, an axe to grind; either they are committed to what I might call the Jesus movement and are trying to persuade you of an interpretation of the facts that supports that case, or they are vehemently opposed to the claims and objects of that movement and have tried to discount that case. "Thus, in respect of the so-called resurrection – perhaps the centre-piece of the Church's argument and certainly the most startling of its claims – the opposing side claims that the body was removed from the grave, either by supporters of Jesus to bolster their case for the resurrection, or by simple grave-robbers hoping to make a bit of money out of selling it to a medical institution or something.  It is for you, members of the jury, to assess the strength of those arguments, but I will draw your attention to one fact on which you may feel some certainty.  As I understand this particular part of the case, it is accepted by both sides that the tomb was empty. "A second major point of contention concerns what has been dubbed in the media, I understand, the Pentecost palaver.  Again, let me remind you that there is much common ground between the two sides.  Clearly, some sort of public brouhaha erupted on that occasion.  You will recall that this great city of Jerusalem, at the times of the great feasts and festivals of the Jewish faith, attracts worshippers from all parts of the world.  They come to worship the one and only God, but they bring with them their own languages and understandings.  On this Day of Pentecost this is precisely what had happened; the city was full of people of many different ethnicities, nationalities and languages. "And according to many witnesses who have told you their story, there was a sudden and deafening noise in the area of a building in which many of Jesus' followers were gathered; and following that noise, the leaders of that assembly were heard preaching their faith in many different languages.  Or so says the Church.  Others, who agree that something strange took place, insist that the leaders were drunk, and were in fact babbling nonsense.  That, members of the jury, is again a matter for you to decide. "So what assistance can I give to you to help you in your most difficult task?  At the risk of over-simplification, I want to suggest to you that the real question before you comes to this: was Jesus of Nazareth, as his critics claim, only a human being, or was he (is he), as the Church claims, God?  That is a startling question, but it necessarily arises if you accept that the sort of evidence that has been brought before you in this case is, in the broad sense, true.  That, I say again, is for you to determine. "But let me say this: do not concern yourself with each detail of every instance mentioned in the vast amount of evidence that has been put forward.  You may feel that the better approach is to take a few specific cases and weigh the evidence relating to those instances.  Take the case of the man born blind: are you satisfied by the evidence before you that he was born blind, and that many years later his sight was restored by this man called Jesus?  What about the feeding of the five thousand?  Or the story of Jesus walking on the Lake and calming the storm?  Of course, you may decide that these and other specific cases are concocted nonsense, in which case you will find against the Church.  But if you find yourself convinced beyond a reasonable doubt you may then wish to ask yourself, drawing on your own human experience and commonsense, could any ordinary human being have done those things, or must he be something more than a mere human being?  And when you have done that exercise, you may think you should approach the issue of the resurrection in a similar way.  Are the accounts credible, and if they are, what does that tell you about the identity of the one who was not in the tomb on that Sunday morning? "Members of the jury, the opposition says there is only one God; and that to claim that Jesus of Nazareth is God means that there are now two Gods.  That is a powerful argument, and if it cannot be answered then the Church's claim is fatally flawed.  But the Church says it has an answer; a complicated, mind-numbing answer it calls, in shorthand, the doctrine of the Trinity.  It says that the one God that we all worship and recognise is a Community of Three Persons, whom it calls the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  It says that the Father is the one whom Jesus called "Abba"; that Jesus himself is the Son; and the Holy Spirit is the one who caused such a commotion at Pentecost. "It is an ingenious explanation, and one that is not without its critics.  All I want to do as I finish this summing-up is to remind you of this.  The central question for you is this: is Jesus divine or not?  If he is not, then you can safely throw out this whole idea of the Trinity and get on with your life.  But if you are convinced that Jesus is divine, then you may feel that this mysterious doctrine, or something very like it, is essential to explain how that can be. "The question is now for you to decide.  May God bless you and guide you in your deliberations, this day and always.  Amen."

Being Ill and Getting Better

Texts: Lamentations 3:22-33; 2 Corinthians 8:7-15; Mark 5:21-43 Last week we thought about the mystery of God in relation to natural disasters.  If God is the Creator of all things, and has sovereignty over all things, must it not follow that God is responsible – that God causes – natural disasters that often result in hundreds and even thousands of deaths?  Or is God, as it were, continuing to bring order out of chaos, but that creative work has not yet been completed?  Does chaos still erupt from time to time and will it continue to do so, until God's creative work has been completed?  And we noted how both of those views are to be found in Scripture, at least in the Old Testament if not the New. This week we have a similar issue to grapple with – that of illness and premature death.  What are we to make of these?  Are they God's doing in some way – does God cause illness – or is it something that happens and against which God is actively working?  Again, if we look to Scripture, we seem to find that the answer to these questions is Yes and Yes! As I was beginning to think about this sermon I received the latest all-points bulletin from our archbishops concerning the practices of Communion in the world of H1N1 influenza.  We seem to have gone up a notch in our need for security – the danger level has gone from yellow to orange.  What was helpful advice has now become a directive – at least in intent, although we Anglicans are notoriously averse to taking directions from bishops or even archbishops.  But the archbishops now say that the advice from their medical advisers is that we must not allow intinction – that is, the dipping of the wafer in the wine.  We now have only two options: we may receive the wafer without the wine, or we may drink from the chalice, but we must not dip our wafer in the wine.  This time our Bishop endorses the archbishops' view so it is now a matter of discipline in this diocese.  Just how much force the chalice bearer is entitled to use to stop you dipping your wafer has not been made clear! But all this is a useful way into today's theme and our readings; because it highlights for us some of the issues that our Jewish forbears in the faith had to struggle with.  We might turn up our superior noses at the old Jewish idea of being "unclean", but in some sense that's what this issue surrounding Communion, and particularly, the common cup, is all about.  We can say it is simply a commonsense approach to public health.  It is in the interests of all of us to stop the spread of this new virus if we can.  It is sensible – and considerate – to keep it to ourselves if we have it or are suspected of having it.  Staying home – quarantine – whatever we want to call it – makes good sense; and we can readily agree that a Christian concern for our neighbour should lead us to take such steps voluntarily if there is a risk that we have it and could pass it on to others. But if we get past the voluntary stage – as our archbishops seem to want us to do in relation to the chalice – are we guilty of excluding people to protect ourselves?  Are we acting, not out of loving concern for others, but selfish concern for ourselves?  Are we succumbing to fear – are we in danger of looking upon others as "unclean" and excluding them from worship? As we reflect on this new virus and our response to it, let us try for a moment to see if we can better understand what the Torah was on about in classifying people in certain circumstances as unclean, such as this woman in the gospel story today who had been bleeding for years, was certainly thereby rendered unclean in Jewish law.  When she appeared in public in the crowd surrounding Jesus she was breaking Jewish Law, and could have been stoned to death if her condition had been known to the crowd.  When she touched Jesus, she rendered him 'unclean', come to that, so he should have withdrawn, too.  We might shake our heads at this, but are we not faced with the same sort of dilemma today, and every time there is an outbreak of an infectious disease?  Think back a few years to the discrimination experienced by those known to have the HIV virus, let alone AIDS. So illness is always associated, to a greater or lesser extent, with fear, and often surrounded with taboos.  Think of the difficulty people sometimes have in pronouncing the word 'cancer': the word itself is too scary so we won't use it if we can avoid it.  We either use a euphemism – 'the Big C' – or so-and-so died 'after a long illness' – or, like the great dramatist Dennis Potter we even give it a witty nickname (he called his tumour Rupert after Rupert Murdoch whom he disliked!)  And often our first response is to push the sick away, which is not far from punishing them, but is usually motivated by a desire to protect ourselves.  Asylums and sanatoriums are part of our recent history. What we don't usually do is blame God for illness, unless, of course, it is a sexual disease we're talking about and we hold a particular brand of theology that says that God will use such illnesses to punish those who are sexually promiscuous.  If we are not of that persuasion – if we are horrified by such a theology – then we ought to be made to feel at least a little uncomfortable by our first lesson this morning.  The Book of Lamentations was written at the time of the siege and eventual destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians; and some of its descriptions of the suffering at that time certainly needs a warning about readers' discretion.  Here's just one snippet from chapter 2, referring to the time of the siege: Should women eat their offspring, the children they have cared for?  Should priest and prophet be killed in the sanctuary of the Lord? The author's questions are, of course, addressed to God; but his complaint is not that God should have intervened on Judah's behalf and driven the Babylonians away.  His complaint is far more shocking that that.  He claims that God himself is the cause of the suffering, and he spells it out in ever more graphic images in chapter 3, from which our lesson is taken this morning.  Here is a small example from earlier in this chapter: he dragged me from the path and mangled me... Here's another: He has broken my teeth with gravel; he has trampled me in the dust.  It's all God's doing!  That's the logic that follows if we believe that everything that happens in this world comes from God – or, at the very least, is permitted by God.  But is that the sort of God revealed in Jesus Christ? Our immediate response to that question is surely to say an emphatic No!  And at one level our gospel reading gives us two stunning reasons for saying that.  A young girl is dying.  Her father comes to Jesus and begs him to save her.  Seemingly too late, because before they can get to her, she dies.  Ah, well, we might be about to say, at least Jesus wanted to help – he would have helped if he had got there in time.  But, wait, there's more!  Jesus gets there and raises the dead girl back to life!  Jesus overcomes illness and even death.  He, like his Father in heaven, brings the order of life out of the chaos of illness and death. But wait, there's more!  On the way to the young girl's deathbed, a woman touches the hem of his garment and is immediately healed of a debilitating illness that has baffled her doctors for years.  What could be plainer than that?  Jesus, the full and perfect revelation of God, fights against illness and premature death, and prevails.  In these two cases, and in a number of others documented in the Scriptures. But not always, eh?  And there's the mystery.  As I've said in the notes, at one level these two healing stories can be understood as illustrating two types of prayer.  The father intercedes for his daughter; the woman seeks healing for herself.  In each case their request is granted, and Jesus links it with their faith.  When the father is told his daughter has died, Jesus says to him, "Don't be afraid; just believe."  And when the woman is healed, he says to her "your faith has healed you".  And therein lies the danger of these stories. All too often, people whose prayers have not been answered have been told they have insufficient faith.  Or that God is punishing them for some un-confessed sin; or the sin of one of their forebears "to the fourth generation" – a sort of family curse.  The tragic case of the "family exorcism" shows us all too graphically where that sort of theology can lead. How much better to say in such cases, we do not know.  We do not know why some are healed and some are not; we do not know why some prayers are answered and some are not.  How much better to stand with the author of the Book of Lamentations, who, in the face of terrible suffering, found he was able to say:  Yet this I call to mind and therefore I have hope.  Because of the Lord's great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail.  They are new every morning... That may not be what we think of as healing.  But it is real hope, real faith, and real love.  And according to St Paul, when everything else is gone, those three things remain.  They do not depend on the outcome of a particular illness; they are the gifts of God who (says the author of Lamentations) "does not willingly bring affliction or grief to any human being"...  Amen.

Breathing Fresh Life

Texts: Ezekiel 37: 1-14; Acts 2:1-21; John 15:26-27, 16:4b-15 I want to start this morning by drawing your attention to a few lines from today's liturgy; in fact, they are part of our intercessions on page 413: Father, enliven the Church for its mission that we may be salt of the earth and light to the world. Breathe fresh life into your people. Give us power to reveal Christ in word and action.   There in those few lines of intercessory prayer we have the essence of what Pentecost is all about.  At Pentecost the Spirit did not come to the world at large; the Spirit came to the believers, the embryonic Church.  That's the first thing to say about the Spirit.  Sometimes we hear people insisting that the whole of Creation is infused with the Spirit of God, or the Holy Spirit.  That's a lovely thought, and it's usually well-intentioned.  Apart from anything else, if we believe that we should be more careful of our environment, so such an idea has a practical use.   Others who may not wish to go that far claim that all human beings have within us a deposit, as it were, of the Holy Spirit, sometimes called the divine spark in all human beings.  Well, that's a lovely thought, too, and has a very practical advantage if it leads us to treat all human beings with more respect than we might otherwise do.   But however lovely those thoughts may be, and whatever practical advantages they may carry with them, there is a problem we as Christians need to ponder.  In short, they do not seem to take account of Pentecost.  They may be true as far as they go, but they don't go far enough.  For something extra was given to the church at Pentecost, a second helping, if you like, that was not given to other human beings, or other species or parts of Creation.  And whatever it was, it wasn't given to the Church because the believers were loved more dearly by God, or because they were special and deserved it, or even that they were so hopeless they needed an extra portion!   As our intercessory prayer reminds us, the Spirit came to "enliven the Church for its mission", and to "give us power to reveal Christ in word and action".  And we can recall the words of Christ as recorded towards the end of St Luke's gospel: "I am going to send you what my Father has promised; but stay in the city until you have been clothed with power from on high."  Pentecost is the Day on which they were "clothed with power from on high".   That it is also the beginning of the new creation is beautifully illustrated by our first lesson this morning, which features Ezekiel's famous vision of the valley of dry bones.  As I've said in the notes in the pewsheet this morning, this vision draws on the language of the Genesis story of the creation of Adam.  (As I have been saying recently, there are echoes of the earlier story in this one.)  We remember how we are told that the Lord God formed the body of Adam out of the dust of the earth; and then, says the author, the Lord God "breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being".   A similar two-stage process is described by Ezekiel in his vision.  The physical stuff comes first; the bones come together and tendons and flesh appear on them and skin covers them; but, says the author "there was no breath in them".  So the four winds were commanded to breathe into them, "and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet".  And, of course, immediately another bell is ringing loudly in your minds!  For you recall being told on more than one occasion that to stand up (or stand up again) is the literal meaning of resurrection.  So what we have in this vision is a preview of the general resurrection, which as St Paul reminds us, will be brought about by the same Spirit that raised Jesus to life on Easter Day, the same Spirit that breathed life into Adam.   Our second lesson describes the coming of the Spirit upon the embryonic Church, and it makes a very interesting point.  It does not say that the apostles preached in different languages; it says the people from the various countries listed all "heard" the gospel in their own languages.  "Hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church", we say, not "hear what we are reading to the Church".  The Spirit takes the words of the Apostles and speaks to the various ethnic groups in their own languages.  It is often said that this is the solution to the problem of Babel, or the healing of the curse of Babel.  Instead of taking us back to the state when all human beings spoke the same language, the Spirit becomes the medium through whom all people can hear and understand the gospel.  Without that gift there could be no worldwide mission of the Church.  The Spirit empowers the apostles to preach, and empowers the hearers to hear.   The gospel reading makes one more very important point.  The Holy Spirit is the guardian and teacher of the divine truth; and that, apart from anything else, tells us that there is such a thing as truth in this sense.  Some things are true and some are false; and it is simply not the case that one person's truth is as valid as anyone else's.  Jesus taught as much truth as the apostles were at that time able to bear; but there was more to know and that was to be made known to them by the Holy Spirit.  Jesus was, above all, known to them as "Rabbi", teacher: his ministry was first and foremost one of teaching.  The same is true of the Holy Spirit; he comes at Pentecost to continue Jesus' ministry of teaching.   That's why there is such an emphasis on identity of material.  Jesus has made known that which the Father has given to him; and the Spirit will take from that same revelation and give it to them.  It is all one, as the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit are one, a mystery that we will ponder again next week as we celebrate Trinity Sunday. The Spirit brings life, and empowers us to bring life to others: the Spirit brings us into all truth that we may teach that truth to others.  That is why we pray in confidence and trust:   Father, enliven the Church for its mission that we may be salt of the earth and light to the world. Breathe fresh life into your people. Give us power to reveal Christ in word and action.

His Call

Texts: Acts 10:44-48; 1 John 5:1-6; John 15:9-17 I was listening on Friday morning to an interview with the former head of the Anglican Church in Scotland – the Episcopalian Church, as the Scots call it – Archbishop Richard Holloway.  The Archbishop has become something of a John Spong or Lloyd Geering figure in his later years, and has incurred some of the same criticism as those two often attract in some quarters.  And for much the same reasons. Archbishop Holloway stood down from his position – took early retirement, in lay terms – in 2000, and he explained that one of the major reasons for this was his disillusionment with the Anglican Bishops at Lambeth 1998, when his fellow bishops took a hard stand against homosexual relationships.  He felt their stance was a denial of the gospel of absolute unconditional love, inclusiveness, and fundamental human rights.  It is, he said, an issue of social justice, and he couldn't stomach the denial of such values by the majority of his fellow bishops any longer.  He said one more thing of considerable interest to me: he said we must always try to keep religion out of ethics. And then he quoted from the Scriptures, and, in particular, from today's gospel passage.  He said Jesus called his followers his friends, and commanded us to love one another.  Presumably, he doesn't think the new commandment is an example of religious ethics or ethical religion!  But leaving that aside, he didn't address the half-verse in this passage that I want to look at this morning.  According to St John, Jesus said this: You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit – fruit that will last.  What's all this about and how does it relate to the Archbishop's views? The first thing to notice with a passage like this is the identity of the audience.  To whom is Jesus speaking?  Sometimes his teaching is directed to the crowds, the world at large.  Sometimes he is talking to his opponents, arguing with them, usually.  Sometimes his teaching seems addressed to all who believe in him; and sometimes, as on this occasion, he is talking to his hand-picked band of 12 disciples – later to be called the Apostles.  Here he is teaching those who (with the exception of Judas and with the addition in his place of Matthias) will be the foundation leaders and teachers in the Church. And he says to them, "Remember, it's my call.  You did not volunteer, or apply, to join my leadership team, I picked you.  You had to agree, you had to accept my call and respond to it; but it was and always is my call."  Leadership in the Church is not something we seek for ourselves, not something we apply for.  Ordination is not a human right; it is not ours to demand; and it is not ours to confer on others.  In chapter 5 of the Letter to the Hebrews, the author talks about the office of the high priest, and says this: No one takes this honour upon himself: he must be called by God, just as Aaron was.  If you look through the ordinal (the form of service for the ordination of priests begins on page 898 of the Prayer Book) you will see this idea of being called by God all the way through the service.  And if you look a little earlier in the Book of Acts you will see a practical example of this same principle. The remaining eleven apostles decided that they were required by Scripture to find a replacement for Judas, to bring their number back up to 12.  So they prepared a short list (a very short list!), and then prayed, asking God to show them which of the two he was choosing.  God chose Matthias, instead of Joseph Barsabbas; and there's a rather poignant note in the NIV Study Bible to the effect that no more is heard of the "defeated" candidate.  That underlines for me how difficult these decisions are, and how important it is for us to remember whose call it is. Here are two stories from my own experience.  First, a man in a parish in which I was ministering wanted to be ordained, wanted to be a priest.  He was a good man of deep faith, but I did not believe he was being called by God to the priesthood, and I dreaded having to say so.  As it happened, he sent in his application while I was on leave, and process started without my comments being sought.  Along the way, various people ducked the issue; they didn't want to be the one who turned him down, because he was a thoroughly good person. Finally, he arrived at what was known as the "Selection Conference", where all the candidates were assessed over 3 days by a team of 5, who then advised the Bishop.  In this case, all five advised the Bishop against ordaining this man: they did not believe that he was being called to the priesthood.  Within 12 months he left the Anglican Church, and, at his own expense, undertook a two-year training course for ministers in another denomination.  At the end of that training he was again turned down for ordination in that denomination.  Very sad, very hurtful, and we might have all been wrong.  But if we believe that priests are called by God, then in each case that is the only issue the Church should be grappling with.  It is not a question of social justice or human rights; and it is not a question of rewarding good and faithful service to the Church. Here's the second story.  It concerns a congregation in the Diocese of Waikato who had decided to adopt local shared ministry.  Instead of a Vicar, they had a ministry team; and within that team different people were called to different ministries.  Two were priests, one was an administrator, two were liturgists, and so.  How was the team chosen, and the ministries distributed between them?  By the Bishop?  No.  By the congregation?  In one sense, yes, but in a very important sense, no.  The congregation met together for prayer; and only after a prolonged period of prayer were they invited to write down the names of those whom they felt were being called by God to be in the ministry team, and to indicate the ministry to which they thought that person was being called. Think about that for a moment.  This was a small congregation, and many of the members had known each other for years.  They had the full range of human strengths, foibles, and failings.  There were some who made no secret of their wishes and ambitions; and it would have been very easy for that congregation to opt for a quiet life and give everyone their heart's desires.  But that's not how it worked out in practice.  Prayer changed things.  They made decisions that one or two could not accept; but they made them for the right reason.  They believed they were accepting God's choices. I have rather laboured all this because it is possible that this congregation in the not too distant future may be called upon to be involved in decisions of this kind.  With the increasing difficulty in finding and affording stipendiary clergy, more and more congregations may have to look among its own membership for priests and other leaders.  You have been warned!  But you have also been advised – let the Scriptures be your guide, and prayer your method of choice. I want to finish with our first lesson this morning, and return to the views of Archbishop Richard Holloway.  In our lifetime, the Anglican Church has faced two huge issues relating to ministry.  First, there was the question of the ordination of women; and even today there are some areas of the Church that grizzle about that, and certainly chafe at the thought of women bishops.  However, at least in this country, that issue has been settled.  But now we are having similar angst over the ordination of gays.  Both those issues seem to us to be of huge importance – unless we know our history and our Scriptures. Read the Book of Acts, and we will see that our issues pale into insignificance compared to the one that faced the early Church.  For faithful Jews it was simply unthinkable that Gentiles could be admitted to the Church as Gentiles; surely, they would have to be circumcised, surely they would have to comply with the dietary code and all the rest of it?  That was certainly Peter's view at the beginning.  Until he saw that God had an entirely different view.  Today we find him saying to the Jewish converts, who "were astonished that the gift of the Holy Spirit had been poured out even on the Gentiles", "Can anyone keep these people from being baptised with water?  They have received the Holy Spirit just as we have?" If only the Church would remember its own Scriptures, instead of rabbiting on about the Human Rights Act, we would be spared all the angst over the ordination of women and the ordination of gays.  If the call is always God's, who are we to exclude anybody from being called? The irony is that Archbishop Holloway was right on the substance of the issue; but because he turned away from the Scriptures and based his argument on purely secular grounds of human rights and social justice, he found himself leaving the Church, and abandoning his own calling. Abide in me, says Jesus, and I will abide in you.  Alleluia! Amen!

Echoes and Reverberations

Texts: Acts 8:26-40; 1 John 4:7-21; John 15:1-8 Someone has described Easter Day as being for Christians what the Big Bang is for cosmologists.  When Jesus was raised from the dead there was a vast explosion of spiritual power released into the world, which to this day is expanding outwards to fill the universe – until the moment comes when all is in Christ and Christ is in all.  I find this image helpful in many ways, and one of those ways concerns what scientists call echoes of the Big Bang.  In ways that are far beyond my ability to comprehend, these clever people claim to be able to hear echoes of the original Big Bang, and even to see almost that far back in the history of the universe. I must leave that to them; but increasingly, as I have read and studied and reflected on the Scriptures, I have found time and again that a particular passage that I am looking at is full of echoes of some other passage; and in this Easter Season that seems to happen more often still.  We have an excellent example of that in our first lesson this morning; so I want to start today with this story about the Ethiopian official and his encounter with Philip, usually known (because of this story) as Philip the Evangelist.  As we read or hear this story, what other stories or passages of Scripture might echo in our minds? Well, let's have a look.  The most obvious feature of this story is that it takes place on a road, and is an encounter between somebody on a journey and a stranger who interrupts him.  So what other story comes to mind in this Easter Season as we read this story?  Surely, St Luke's story of the disciples on the road to Emmaus.  And there's a coincidence, isn't there?  St Luke is also the author of the Book of Acts, so he has written this story of Philip and the official, and shaped it along the lines of his story set on the road to Emmaus. Watch what happens.  The official has been to Jerusalem and is now going home: he is journeying away from the city.  What about the disciples in the earlier story?  They had left the city and were on the way (home?) to Emmaus.  Suddenly, a stranger, Philip, catches him up and asks him a question; just as the stranger, the Risen Christ, caught up with the disciples and asked them a question.  And very soon a bible study is underway, as Philip explains to him how the Scriptures have been fulfilled in Jesus Christ; which, again, is exactly what happened on the road to Emmaus.  In this story we have the Holy Spirit taking up and continuing the ministry of the Risen Christ.  In St Luke's terms, during the period between Easter and Pentecost the divine agent was the Risen Christ, and after Pentecost it was the Holy Spirit; but, of course, it's all one and the same God working his purposes out.  Or, in terms of the image I started with this morning, the ripples of power spreading out from the Big Bang of Easter washing over the disciples on the road to Emmaus and the official on his way home to Ethiopia. What other echoes might there be in this story for us? Well, after the bible study comes the baptism.  The official has well and truly heard what the Spirit was saying to him through the Scriptures, and wants to be baptised.  So when they come to some water, he brings his journey to another (temporary) halt, and Philip baptises him.  Then St Luke continues this part of the story in these words: When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord...[did something].  Where have we heard words like those before?  We have heard them in the various accounts of Jesus' own baptism...  So this baptism this morning reverberates with the sound of Jesus' own baptism, and reminds us that this Gentile, this Ethiopian official, is simply following in the footsteps of Christ; and the same is true, of course, of every other baptism including yours and mine. Is there anything else?  Yes, there is, even if, to modern eyes and ears, St Luke is pushing his luck a bit far here.  He writes this: The Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing.  Again, it is an almost exact parallel with what happened in the Emmaus story: as soon as the penny dropped with the disciples, the Risen Christ vanished from their sight and they returned to Jerusalem in high spirits! The point of all this is that Easter is being repeated or fleshed out in this story this morning; the ripples are spreading out.  And it's interesting that, having finished this story, St Luke then turns immediately to an even more famous "road story" – this time set on the road to Damascus.  It is, of course, another unexpected encounter – a journey interrupted in a life-changing way.  This is not the occasion to go too far into that story, except to draw attention to the link between what the Risen Christ says to Saul on that occasion, and today's passage from St John's gospel. Last week, you will recall, Bishop George preached about the image of Jesus as the Good Shepherd: the Good Shepherd looks after his sheep, searches for the lost, leads them into good pasture, and so on.  And he stressed that this passage was about the relationship between Jesus as the shepherd as his followers as the sheep.  The ideal pastoral relationship, loving, caring, intimate, but still a relationship between two distinct parties, as it were – the shepherd and his flock. So when the Risen Christ confronts Saul on the road to Damascus, we might have expected him to say, "Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting my flock?  Why are you scattering my sheep?"  That would make perfect sense in terms of that image Bishop George was preaching about last week.  But that's not what the Risen Christ says to Saul, is it?  He says, "Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?"  Not my sheep, my flock, my followers, or my church – but me.  The Risen Christ now identifies himself with his followers.  Here, surely, is the basis of St Paul's theology of the Body of Christ.  Christ is now present in the world as his church, his believers and followers. And I think in this extraordinary image of the vine and the branches that St John gives us in this chapter 15 (which we will be looking at in more detail next week) we have his version of the same idea of Christ "comprising" his followers.  If we are the branches and he is the vine, then any damage to any branch is also damage to the vine itself.  Hence, in persecuting any of us Saul is persecuting Christ himself. This same idea seems to have been in St John's mind when he wrote his first letter, from which our second lesson was taken this morning.  I must confess that I don't find this letter particularly easy to read – it borders on the repetitive, if not the downright tedious in places.  But the central thought is very beautiful and profound.  To be in love is to be in God.  When we love, he says, God's love is made complete in us.  That's a very challenging thought, as we can see when we look at it from the other side.  When we refuse to love, when we withhold our love from someone, then we render God's love incomplete.  That's quite a thought, particularly in this Easter Season. We are called to receive the ripples from the Big Bang of Easter, but also to let them flow on past us to reach others.  We are called to continue our journey along the road to faith, to be interrupted by the good news of Christ, and then to share it with others.  That's what the disciples on the road to Emmaus did; that's what the Ethiopian official did; and that's what Saul of Tarsus did.  Now it's our turn.

Being Practical

Texts: Acts 1:15-17, 21-26; 1 John 5:9-13; John 17:6-19 Today is the Sunday after the Ascension, which is not the catchiest of titles but it serves, perhaps, to illustrate the difficulty the Church faces with this strange period of 10 days between the Ascension and Pentecost.  I have said something about that in the notes in the pewsheet this morning.  In this modern world it is hard enough to get our heads around the idea of the Ascension itself; what do we mean when we say that, in the sight of his followers, the Risen Christ took off from earth and rose into the heavens?  That's one difficulty, and mercifully we can usually avoid it because Ascension Day always falls on a Thursday, not a Sunday. But we can't avoid the difficulty of this period of 10 days.  What's going on?  Where is Christ at the moment, while we wait for the coming of the Spirit?  Are we left alone in the meantime?  And we are not helped by the fact that only St Luke mentions the Ascension at all; the other three gospels do not, although St John does have Jesus saying that he was "returning to my Father".  Some suggest that St Luke was simply tidying up; it appears that there were a few weeks of resurrection appearances after Easter, and then they stopped, and at some point after that the Spirit came upon the believers.  Perhaps St Luke felt compelled by the logic of the situation to say that the Risen Christ must have gone back to the Father (or ascended into heaven) sometime between Easter and Pentecost to explain the cessation of the resurrection appearances...  And again that fits reasonably well with Jesus' teaching in St John: he said that the Spirit could not come unless he first of all went away. Well, we might have to struggle with some of that a little more on Trinity Sunday, but today I want to come down to earth, and ask a more practical question.  What, according to Luke, were the believers supposed to do in this short period as they waited for the Spirit?  And the answer seemed to be to hold a mini-Synod, or perhaps we should call it a mini-electoral college.  In our first lesson this morning, which seems to be set between the ascension of Christ and the coming of the Spirit, we're told that a gathering of about 120 believers (by sheer coincidence, almost exactly the size of our Diocesan Synod!) met together to elect an Apostle to replace Judas.  Just the sort of thing that we do in Synod – we fill vacancies in offices. All very mundane and down to earth.  But one of the great fascinations to me in reading Scripture is always to look for the subtexts, or subplots.  There is something very interesting about the criterion for choosing the candidates.  A little later in time, the Church decided to choose some deacons, including Stephen.  On that occasion the instruction was to choose people who were known to be full of the Spirit and wisdom.  There is no mention of those qualities here: here they want someone selected from among "those who have been with us the whole time the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from John's baptism to the time when Jesus was taken up from us".  Only such people were qualified for selection.  And the reason for this is given by Peter as follows: "For one of these must become a witness with us of his resurrection." There's quite a lot going on here.  First, it tells us, I think, that the critical issue for this particular community of faith is to establish the fact of the resurrection.  In other words, here is further proof that the idea of the resurrection was there at the very beginning of the Church, and not invented sometime later as the Geerings of the world would have us believe.  And it may well be that at the heart of the argument over the resurrection was the identity of the Risen Christ with Jesus of Nazareth. I spoke recently about echoes from one story being heard in another; and the echo I think we can hear in this story comes from St John's account of the healing of the man born blind.  You remember what a fuss that healing caused, and how the cynics argued that it could not be the same guy.  The guy who was now jumping up and down and able to see could not be the same man who was born blind and had been a blind beggar ever since.  And so the man's parents were brought into the argument – is this your son?  Is this the same guy?  And, of course, we could say of the parents, they were with the guy from the beginning: that was the value of their testimony. So this morning's story strongly suggests that those who were arguing against the resurrection were insisting that whoever the Risen Christ was he was not Jesus of Nazareth.  That's one sub-text here, but there may be an even more interesting one.  If the criterion for appointment as an Apostle is that he must have known and been with Jesus throughout his earthly ministry, then a very important person is disqualified, that person being Saul of Tarsus, better known to us as St Paul.  It is clear from some of his writings that he had to argue very strongly for recognition as an apostle; and it may well be that he was said to be disqualified because he had not been with Jesus throughout Jesus' earthly ministry. So perhaps we have in this story this morning an early example of factionalism in the Church, of an attempt to keep power within the inner circle of those who had been Jesus' followers from the very beginning.  All very human, and very similar to what goes on in Synods of today!  The Church as institution – making practical arrangements – choosing office holders, playing human power games, and so on – may not be very attractive, and it is easy to be scornful, but, says St Luke, we have to live in the real world. And in a strange sort of way that seems to be the central message of our gospel reading today.  This is another extract from that long teaching we have in St John's gospel given by Jesus to his Apostles on the night before he died.  We are now reaching the conclusion of that teaching.  Chapter 17 records Jesus at prayer: first, he prays for himself, then for his apostles, and then for those who will believe in him through their teaching (including us).  And in this prayer that he offers for his apostles there is yet another subtext. Jesus says this: "My prayer is not that you take them out of the world, but that you protect them from the evil one."  Almost certainly, behind this remark is a dispute within this community of faith between those who believed that the world is so evil Christians must withdraw from it, and those who believe that we must exercise our faith in the real world, and confront its evil head on, as it were.  Some members may well have withdrawn into some sort of enclosed community, like the Essenes, forerunners of monastic communities that would develop in the second century. These readings illustrate the tension that exists between the two ages, or the two worlds, in which Christians find ourselves.  The new age, the new creation, has begun, but the old one is still with us.  The Resurrection, the Ascension, and Pentecost are to be understood as the victory of the new over the old: they are first and foremost statements of faith by the Church that in Christ life is victorious over death, love over hatred, not just here on earth but throughout the whole of creation...  The result of that victory is reconciliation with God the creator of all that is, seen and unseen; and the evidence of that is the coming of God's Spirit in all his fullness, which we will celebrate next week.  Alleluia!  Amen!